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Add the "Ocaps meet human relationships" section
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README.org
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README.org
@ -892,7 +892,59 @@ in fact, very similar to how we program every day.
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than they are ocaps), so the name "object capability" was chosen to
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distinguish between the two.
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** Ocaps meet human relationships
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** Ocaps meet social relationships (or: just in time authority)
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Some systems that try to confine authority today are called "sandboxes".
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If you have had experience with present-day sandboxes, you might be
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skeptical, based on those experiences, that an ocap type system will work.
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That would be understandable; in many such systems a user has to
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pre-configure all the authority that a sandboxed process will need before
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the process even starts up.
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Almost inevitably, this authority doesn't end up being enough.
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Time and time again, the user opens the sandboxed process only to find that
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they have to "poke another hole" in the system.
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Eventually they let too much authority through; out of frustration, the
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user might simply pass through nearly everything.
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Thankfully, ocaps don't have this problem.
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Unlike many traditional sandbox systems, we can pass around references
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whenever we need them... authority can be handed over "just in time".
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This is less surprising if we consider the way passing around ocap
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references resembles the way people develop social relationships.
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If Alice knows Bob and Alice knows Carol, Alice might decide it is
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useful to introduce Bob to Carol.
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We see this all the time with the way people exchange phone numbers
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today.
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"Oh, you really ought to meet Carol! Hold on, let me give you her
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number!"
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#+BEGIN_CENTER
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[[file:./static/granovetter.png]]
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/One of the Granovetter Diagrams shown in [[http://erights.org/elib/capability/ode/index.html][Ode to the Granovetter Diagram]]./
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/Pardon the geocities-era aesthetic./
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#+END_CENTER
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In fact, thinking about such social relationships have long been at
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the heart of ocap systems.
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One of the most famous (and informative) ocap papers is one called
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[[http://erights.org/elib/capability/ode/index.html][Ode to the Granovetter Diagram]] (a truly remarkable paper which shows
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how many complicated systems, including basic money and financial
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transaction infrastructure, can be modeled on ocaps).
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In this paper "Granovetter Diagrams" such as the above are introduced,
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showing how ocaps flow through a system by social introductions.
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In fact the above diagram is pretty much exactly the same as our phone
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number exchange... "Alice is sending Bob the message =foo=, which
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contains a reference to Carol, and now Bob has been introduced to /
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has access to Carol."
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It turns out that Granovetter Diagrams have their origin in sociology,
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from a famous paper by Mark S. Granovetter named
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[[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780124424500500250][The Strength of Weak Ties]].
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It's good news that much of thinking about ocaps has been based on
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how human relationships develop in sociology, since we are now about
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to use them to build a robust social network.
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* How to build it
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** Ocaps we can use in our protocols
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